Man has manufactured various types of products using different substances (materials). The materials are classified to metal materials, ceramic materials, high polymerized materials, and composite materials made of combinations of the aforementioned materials. Each of the materials has a unique property. The property shows characteristics of the products. It is possible to form metals and ceramics solely into products. However, alloys and multi-element ceramics are made in a manner that more than two kinds of elements are dissolved to be mixed. The high polymerized materials are composed of (synthesized with) elements such as C, H, O, N, X (halogen), P, and S, as required. There are tons of elements which can be used for producing the high polymerized materials.
An attribute of the material is shown by a sum of a bulk attribute and a surface attribute. The bulk attribute is almost determined according to a kind and/or a composition of the material. The surface attribute is not always the same even when the kind and/or the composition of elements are the same. The surface attribute changes according to time as well as an external field environment based on a law of Gibbs' free energy (ΔG=ΔH−TΔS, ΔH: enthalpy change, T: absolute temperature, ΔS: entropy change). If the external field environment includes, for example, oxygen, humidity, and ultraviolet rays, the surface of the material chemically changes to be another substance (i.e., to have another attribute) from moment to moment.
The change of the surface of the material in the natural world puts a hard obstacle to the improvement of manufacturing of products using surface functions thereof. The obstacle varies according to the kinds of the surface functions. However, it is at least apparent that a surface property of a product differs between yesterday and today. A material dependency derives from a surface nature which the material has as its unique attribute. Today, this is unavoidable. However, if construction of a concept of identification of the changes at a certain point of time realizes a material independency, it becomes possible to improve the manufacturing of products based on the concept. This will bring us a bright future in this twenty-first century.
The identification of the surfaces of the materials is achieved according to the following steps. For example, if it becomes possible to make films (thin films) having the same chemical composition and surface property at any time for any material, the identification of the surfaces of the materials will be achieved by a surface treatment method capable of providing such films (thin films). The inventor of the present invention names such agent an identical surface making-functionalizing agent. We sometimes call the identical surface making-functionalizing agent simply as a surface treatment agent. When the identical surface making-functionalizing agent for identifying the surfaces of the materials is brought into contact with the materials (e.g., metal materials, ceramic materials, high polymerized materials, organic solids, and other composite materials), the identical surface making-functionalizing agent tightly adheres to the surfaces of the materials or chemically bonds to (reacts with) the surfaces of the materials. As a result, the materials come to have the same properties on their surfaces independent from the kinds of their materials. In other words, differences of the surface properties are minimized as much as possible between materials. An agent producing the above described effect is the identical surface making-functionalizing agent.
The identical surface making-functionalizing agent has a function of tightly adhering (or bonding) to the surface of the material and thereby forming a film (thin film) thereon. The identical surface making-functionalizing agent tightly adhered (or bonded) to the surface of the material comes to have a function of reacting with other functional groups. The identical surface making-functionalizing agent has a function of effectively working on many kinds of materials. In sum, the identical surface making-functionalizing agent is rich in diversity. We call the agent having such property, specifically, as the identical surface making-functionalizing agent.
Some of the conventional surface treatment agents have a function of, for example, adhering to a surface of a material. However, such conventional surface treatment agents are sometimes poor in reaction. Or, such conventional surface treatment agents sometimes lack diversity. For example, such conventional surface treatments are applicable to a material A but are not applicable to a material B. In other words, such conventional surface treatments are only applicable to materials of a limited range (lacks diversity).